April in Milan is not a cruel, but an incredibly full month, with little free space. All the more key then to plan the short time that you have available for the Salone (along with its offspring, the Salone Ufficio, Euroluce and Salone Satellite) and for the events downtown, meaning the Fuorisalone, as well as you can. Who is celebrating what anniversary? What designers is being done proud with a solo show? What does the Triennale have to offer? What new design districts will be launched this time? Who serves the best cocktails – and whose tracks can one follow back into the past? Well check it out, as there’s a mass going on! (mm)

Welcome to San Babila: Designjunction comes to Milan

British design platform Designjunction, a key player at the London Design Festival, is also setting up camp in Milan. The chosen venue is Casa dell’Opera Nazionale Balilla, a former school building with a good 10,000 square meters of space and not far from the San Babila subway station – and brands such as Jaguar, Case, Nyta, Luke Irwin London, H Furniture, Modus, Punkt and Baux have all announced they’ll be along for the ride. Tom Dixon will be using the 300-square-meter “Cinema” theater to stage his megastore complete with a light show.

DAMN° Magazine and the Mosca Partners event agency are hosting things at the Palazzo Litta, where architects, designers and other creative minds will be addressing the topic of “Materials. A Matter of Perception”. Among them such outstanding names as Michele De Lucchi and Andrea Branzi, who teamed up with Oikos to curate the exhibition on the “Aesthetics of Misery”; Fernando and Humberto Campana, who have ornamented a small show on Brazilian design; and Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan, who has joined forces with Florentine marble supplier Casone.

The 5Vie design district established last year in the vicinity of Via Santa Marta, Via Santa Maria Podone, Via Santa Maria Fulcorina, Via Bocchetto and Via del Bollo will this year dedicate displays to Luigi Caccia Dominioni, one of the architects who shaped the face of modern Milan and who designed more than 240 objects and items of furniture. On request, tours of Luigi Caccia Dominioni’s office on Piazza Sant’Ambrogio can be arranged.

In the form of the “Il Lazaretto” gallery, Alberto Artesani and Frederik Wachter (DWA Studio) seek to create a venue that highlights exciting projects that have not yet been or never were realized. The premiere will feature 17 designers, the likes of Patricia Urquiola, Luc Guy Beaussart, Studio Dessuant Bone, Andrea Q. e Ferruccio Laviani, who have been invited to address the topic of fasting. And of course the forthcoming Expo is at the back of everyone’s minds here.

Founded in 1934, as an arts-&-Crafts workshop in Giussano just outside Milan, the family company along with its brands Molteni&C, Dada, Unfor and Citterio is now proudly celebrating its 80th anniversary. And especially for the occasion, Molteni asked Brit designer Jasper Morrison to curate a panorama view of the company’s history along with all the company’s hitherto unpublished classics and prototypes.

Kartell has really gone big-time this Salone: There’s not just the parade of novelties at the trade fair, but also a completely revamped permanent exhibition at the in-company museum, and along with Philippe Starck and Pucci it is presenting a special edition of the “Madame” chair, is opening the very first “Kartell by Laufen” store and paying homage last but not least to the great Ettore Sottsass – with an edition of vases, chairs and luminaires the grand Old Master designed but which were never brought out, and a show on Memphis.

“Vis à Vis” is the name of the exhibition at the Moroso Showroom in the Via Pontaccio, which not only presents Jörg Schellmann’s furniture for Moroso but also exhibits of his own editions of artists such as Donald Judd, Cindy Sherman and Gerhard Merz. Some of Schellmann’s objects have also now been included in the Moroso Collection. Which ones? Find out in Milan...

This year, MINI has teamed up with Jaime Hayon for its “Urban Perspectives” series – destined to offer an outlook on the future of mobility. At the center of the colorful setting that the creative Spanish mastermind will dish up will be the electric and folding scooter first presented last year, the “MINI Citysurfer Concept”.

Head of Design at BMW Adrian van Hooydonk likes to philosophize with Alfredo Häberli about “Design and Mobility”. On the occasion of the Salone, the Swiss designer has developed the “Spheres” installation, which takes “Precision and Poetry” as its leitmotif – and it’s all still very much shrouded in secrecy: According to the press release, what you’ll see is a “large-format, deliberately abstract object, the shape of which cites the lightness of forward motion and the design of which explores key values of future automobile design”. Get it?

The very first exhibition of the new Dept. of “Food Non Food” at the Design Academy Eindhoven centers on food, and what is left over on the plate. Alongside the presentation of student projects, such as “Holy Crap”, “In Limbo Embassy” or “Popcorn Monsoon”, you can also grab a bite to eat. Each day, the program will be rounded out by “Breakfast Talks”.

Eat shitVentura LambrateCorner of Via G.Crespi and Via dei Canzi

April 15-19, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.Breakfast Talks: April 15, 16 and 17, from 10-11 a.m.

In this interactive exhibition, the students at the Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne, or ECAL for short, explore the extent to which Smartphones, Selfies and the social media have changed how we see ourselves. By contrast, at Museo Bagatti Valsecchi the ECAL young talents present 12 objects that have arisen in cooperation with Swiss clockmakers Vacheron Constantin.

Be it a bike dynamo, roller-skates or a hand whisk, a miner’s lamp, a beehive or a photo-printer – when they were invented back in the 19th century they revolutionized everyday life and made many things a lot more pleasant. 12 students from the Industrial Design Dept. at the Stuttgart State Academy of the Visual Arts have closely concerned themselves with such objects and the history of their invention. Mentored by Professor Uwe Fischer and in collaboration with BASF, 12 new interpretations have been made and are on show entitled “Inspired By” – they eschew any chic zeitgeist and nevertheless seem very contemporary.

Benetton’s “Fabrica” think-tank has once again joined forces with Daikin, the Japanese air/con maker ready for the Milan furniture week – and drawn on the creative duo of Formafantasma in the process: “FUHA” focuses on the topic of “breathing” – with ten installations that address issues relating to breath, air, and water, in various different ways.

Young British designer and sculptor Max Lamb is forever surprising us when he molds a stool out of sand, turns boulders into tables and chairs, or creates entire interiors from terrazzo. He’s represented in London by Gallery Fumi and in New York by Johnson Trading Gallery and is now for the first time on the ground in Milan with a solo-show entitled “Exercises in seating”.

Danich design platform Mindcraft has relocated from Ventura Lambrate to the Brera district, namely to the Chiostro Minore di San Simpliciano. Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi of GamFratesi are this time the curators of the exhibition financed by the Danish Arts Foundation and the Danish Agency for Culture; and they’re showcasing designers such as Louise Campbell, Ole Jensen, Jakob Jørgensen, Line Depping, Cecilie Manz and Henrik Vibskov – on the topic of “In between”.

Museum Poldi Pezzoli is the venue for an exhibition on maps, cartography, globes, and other visualizations and representations of our planet. The fact is, “geography” can be exciting, or so promises curator Beppe Finessi, editor of “Inventario” magazine published by Foscarini, and with him artists such as Carol Rama, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Mona Hatoum and Latifa Echakhch, not to forget designers such as Diego Grandi, Nendo, Giulio Iacchetti, Ezri Tarazi, Lorenzo Damiani and Drill Design.

When it comes to collaboration, few are as industrious as Studio Nendo alias Oki Sato. And now the Japanese have opted for a full museum show to present the entire range of the various joint ventures they engaged in last year. The exhibition includes not only furniture for manufacturers such as Glas Italia, Alias, Driade, Moroso and Louis Poulsen, but also projects with companies such as Tod’s or Häagen-Dasz as well as their own editions.

Yelena Baturina, whom Forbes estimates to be Russia’s richest woman, and her BEOPEN foundation and her series “Made in…” is focusing on small crafts and design companies around the globe whose future has become ever harder in the face of globalization. On the occasion of the Expo, but as early as the Salone, she has launched the “The Garden of Wonders” – A Journey Through Scents”. Eight perfume companies that disappeared in the course of the last century have been “reanimated” as it were by designers Tord Boontje, Fernando und Humberto Campana, Dimore Studio, Front, Jaime Hayon, Piero Lissoni, Nendo and Jean-Marie Massaud in the form of installations in the Brera Botanical Gardens.

The Triennale Design Museum is devoting itself this year to pasta, prosciutto & Co – in short to food and the kitchen, analog to the Expo motto “Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life”. There are in fact not one but two exhibitions: “Cucine & Ultracorpi” which takes its cue from Jack Finney’s 1955 book “The Body Snatchers” and draws a line from it through to the kitchen, with its machines such as microwaves, fridges and electric stoves. Next door, “Arts & Foods” paints a panorama of how art from 1851 onwards has constantly returned to the theme of food.

Since last year, Atelier Clerici, curated by ex- Domus editor-in-chief Joseph Grima and Z33 Director Jan Boelen, has provided a space for conceptual design. And now Vitra Design Museum is hosting a symposium there which is entitled “The global Shift: Who shapes the Future of Design?” Among the keynote speakers are South African industrial design professor Mugendi M’Rhitaa, Indian innovations researcher Anil Gupta, British architect Indy Johar and designers such as Mario Minale and Thibaut Brevet.

The Global Shift: Who shapes the Future of Design?Palazzo ClericiVia Clerici, 5, Milan

Each Milan year, you can be sure Wallpaper will provide an exciting exhibition. And this time, the Brit zeitgeist magazine has teamed up with New York fashion maker Tory Burch to breathe some fresh air into the “Lettuce” ceramic series Dodie Thayer made back in the 1960s, and to celebrate them. Offbeat London designer Bethan Laura Wood has ably staged the salad dishes and cups.